Top NYC Law Firms Hit The Ice For Ice Hockey in Harlem

SportsMoney
I cover horse racing, from the backstretch to the winner’s circle

As the long-time home of various Law & Order series, Chelsea Piers is no stranger to lawyers, at the least the fictional kind. But last week, dozens of real-life attorneys took over the sports complex’s two ice rinks, not to ply their trade, but to lace up their skates in a charity hockey tournament to raise money for Ice Hockey in Harlem.

Conceived in 2008 by Ice Hockey in Harlem volunteer and board member Jason Crelinsten, the Lawyers’ Cup began as a game between top New York City law firms Proskauer Rose (where Crelinsten worked at the time; he has since left to become the chief compliance officer and deputy general counsel at Greylock Capital Management) and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Crelinsten, who grew up playing hockey in Canada, began volunteering for Ice Hockey in Harlem (at which I also volunteered in the early 2000s) after moving to New York.

“After being involved with Ice Hockey in Harlem as a coach for couple of years and attending some fund-raising events,” explained Crelinsten, “I thought about the charity hockey games that had been run with some success for various charities in Canada, and I thought it would be fun to do something similar in New York.”

Admitting that his approach wasn’t “particularly sophisticated,” he looked at the teams playing in the men’s indoor league at Chelsea Piers.

“I was looking for the most prestigious law firm that had a team, I found the name of the most senior person at the firm, and I cold-called him,” he said. “I had the good fortune of calling the right person.”

That person was Skadden partner Greg Milmoe, who had played hockey at Cornell and was still playing hockey and enthusiastic about a charity game. Both Skadden and Proskauer had at one point represented the NHL; NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is a Proskauer alum, while the league’s deputy commission and chief legal officer Bill Day used to work at Skadden.

Skadden won the first four Lawyers’ Cups, dethroned only when Canadian firm Stikeman Elliott joined what had evolved from a charity game between two teams to a full-fledged tournament. At this year’s event, six teams representing Skadden, Proskauer, Stikeman, Weil Gotshal, Kaye Scholer, and Bailey Duquetteplayed a series of round-robin games that culminated in a championship between Skadden and Stikeman, a competitive event in which Stikeman led 2-1 until the final five minutes, when they put it away to win 3-1, winning their third consecutive Lawyers’ Cup.

The NHL’s Bettman typically presents the trophy to the winning team, as he does the Stanley Cup each spring; he was unable to make it this year and NHL senior vice-president of player safety and Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan did the honors instead.

The law firms underwrite the cost of the tournament and each contributes $5,000 to Ice

Hockey in Harlem; the firms also encourage their employees to donate. Crelinsten estimates that this year’s event raised about $60,000; the public can donate through the event’s Crowdrise page.

As a result of the tournament, Skadden’s Milmoe and Stikeman’s Kenneth Ottenbreit have also joined Ice Hockey in Harlem’s board.

As a past president of the Canadian Association of New York, Ottenbreit has long coordinated events supporting Ice Hockey in Harlem.

“The Canadian Association of New York has been funding and sponsoring Ice Hockey in Harlem since the program started,” he said. “When we played in the Lawyers’ Cup three years ago, we thought we do it once, and we’ve come back every year.”

Stikeman’s New York office is small, so its Lawyers’ Cup team was supplemented with 11 lawyers that flew in from Canada for the event.

“They get a night in New York, and they also help a charity,” said Ottenbreit.

Approximately 230 students are enrolled in Ice Hockey in Harlem’s programs, which include both an on-ice and a classroom component for students aged 6 to 17. The organization’s executive direction John Sanful said that the students are mostly from central Harlem, pretty much evenly split between Hispanic/Latino and African-American children.

The organization’s annual budget is about $450,000, most of which goes towards paying for ice time at Central Park’s Lasker Rink and equipment, though Ice Hockey in Harlem does receive donations from equipment companies and other hockey organizations. The program is free to the participants.

José Burgos and Arlene Rivera live in the Bronx, but are more than happy to make the trip to Harlem each week with their son Ryan.

“We had him in all kinds of sports,” said Burgos, “but this hockey program is run better than any of them.”

“Hands down,” agreed Rivera. “Ryan was disappointed that he couldn’t attend his class last week because of parent-teacher conferences.”

In addition to its hockey league and academic program—at which ESPN’s Jeff MacGregor was recently a speaker—Ice Hockey in Harlem sends students to hockey camps each summer. This past year the organization graduated its first collegiate hockey player when Sidney Kinder made the Division 3 women’s hockey team at Manhattanville College.

But it’s not only success on the ice for which the organization strives. Its motto is “Education is the goal,” and as proud as executive director Sanful is of Kinder’s accomplishments, he speaks with equal enthusiasm about Jabari Scutchins, an IHIH alum teaching in Massachusetts, and Lydell Harrigan, a New York City police officer.

“If you start working with a child at the age of seven,” he asked, “what’s the impact when they leave the program at 17? It’s not just that they learned to play hockey.”

Hockey is the hook, though, not just for the students who can’t wait to get on the ice, and not for the large group of players, spectators, and contributors who turned out for the Lawyers’ Cup.

I teach English and I write, mostly about horse racing, for the Blood-Horse, New York Breeder, the Saratogian, Hello Race Fans!, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, The Racing Biz, and the Brooklyn Heights Blog. My work has also appeared in the Daily Racing Form, Thoroughbred Times,...